Aug 29 2007
Alexander Hamilton’s case for change
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By Jonathan Lenglain
8/29/07
Power and property is concentrating in ever fewer hands, and things are beginning to hurt us in a way that we seek to wrest that power from the bloodlines of the privileged few. Poor Americans are numb and discouraged. Everywhere they hear that they live in a free country where they call the shots, yet their political agenda never comes close to the president’s desk. Every day, Congress deals directly with the concerns of big business lobbyists camping on the floors of Congress, while the White House brokers deals with contractors in Iraq or Afghanistan. Never mind sweeping reforms improving the health care, housing, and tax systems, which are on the agenda of America’s poor. And now that we’ve witnessed the most flamboyant series of illegal activities committed by our government at home and abroad in the name of anti-terrorism, are we finally ready for action?
It seems that things are in such a state that even Alexander Hamilton, the great conservative antagonist to the men we love to quote so much (like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry,) would be on our side. He would be at the forefront of movements to tear things down, and rebuild something new.
Of course, this is the Hamilton credited with building the current economic system almost single-handedly. The man who wanted big government under the patronage of the wealthy, who thought a Bill of Rights was stupid, and whose last words were “Our real disease is DEMOCRACY.”
But Hamilton was a real Genius in a Mozartian sense, and so his flamboyant failings are colorful reminders that this master nation-builder was just human after all. Hamilton was also a slave-abolitionist, a prolific writer devoted to a free-press, and an honorable gentleman who hated corruption, greed, and especially incompetent government.
In 1780, a young Hamilton was in the army, cold, tired and frustrated with the American revolutionary war effort. Could he see the army at work today, he might revive some of his criticisms of the old continental army “It is now a mob, rather than an army…without morals, without discipline. We [the army] begin to hate the country for its neglect of us. The country begin to hate us for our oppressions of them”
Perhaps the army does not hate our country, but it has been hating on the Pentagon pretty hard since the war started, and perhaps this country does not hate the army, but it too hates the pentagon, and at any rate the Iraqis hate the army “for our oppressions of them.” It was instances of bad government like this that made Hamilton advocate a new government.
The debacles of Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, and Afghanistan have destroyed the confidence of our soldiers abroad and the voters at home. The feeling here is that the government is so bad, people are beginning to feel disinterested and dispirited. This is precisely the type of impact that Hamilton predicted of “bad administration.” And when the public is sapped of its spirit to such a point that it won’t engage the government, then a change is necessary:
“There are epochs in human affairs when novelty even is useful. If a general opinion prevails that the old way is bad, whether true or false, and this obstructs or relaxes the operations of the public service, a change is necessary, if it be but for the sake of change. This is exactly the case now. It is a universal sentiment that our present system is a bad one, and that things do not go right on this account.”
This is exactly the sentiment right now. Our present system is a bad one, and things do not go right on this account. All sides should agree that ’tis time for a change.
Ah, yes. Alexander Hamilton, the visionary and man of action! What a model for our cause! As he sat down to write the long letter to the Hon. James Duane on September 3, 1780, and set his first words to paper, “…I sit down to give you my ideas of the defects of our present money system, and the changes necessary to save us from ruin”, he was no doubt afire with a will to action. In this letter, from which Mr. Lenglain quotes in bold above, he advocates handing this country over to the very military/banking interests that hold us in a death grip today. His vision was to create the model for the current Central Banking system - complete with coining money and selling to the govt at interest, along with a standing army.
Change is necessary, but let us be careful who we choose as a model for change, and take heed regarding who they serve. Hamilton’s “vision”, guided by the elitists he so loved to emulate, was as surely the cause of the eventual destruction of this nascent Republic as sunrise is the cause of daylight.
Hamilton was a clever and cunning man, and a puppet of the people who would enslave us - and have enslaved us. He was an ideologue, not a man guided by human understanding moral courage, or breadth of vision. There was good reason why he and Jefferson were constantly at odds with one another. Unfortunately, the kindly, but naive, Washington could not see through Hamilton. All he saw was a dashing, energetic, and bright man - similar to what Mr. Lenglain sees, I expect.
Yes, Hamilton’s Liberty Pole letter did propose rallying the wealthy class behind the new government, but that’s not the point of interest here. The point is that the current state of the union is so bad that there is a case for drastic change even at roots of American conservatism, and people should find such alternative arguments for change very interesting. Basically, if a government neglects its servicemen (in Iraq, afghanistan,) neglects its own people (katrina,) and lies so as to sap the public spirit (we barely vote anymore,) then change is necessary, not just in the theory of radical leftists, but even in the theoretical foundations of Hamiltonian or Adamsite conservatism.
Also, many appraisals of Hamilton are superficial. While fostering markets and establishing banking institutions, he passed moral judgement on those greedy speculators marring the reputation of his system. This does not make him a saint in any sense, but helps understand some of the things he could have had in mind when considering circumstances requiring change “for the sake of change.” I can go deeper into this issue, but it’s irrelevant here.
But thanks for the feedback!
Change doesn’t happen to theories, it happens to people. It matters tremendously what the guiding spirit of that change happens to be, because the guiding spirit determines whether the change is progressive (enlivening and supportive of human development) or regressive (deadening and enslaving). Jefferson was able to see into the guiding spirit behind Hamilton’s “change” and saw the corruption, greed, and lust for power that was its guiding spirit. Have you not yet gotten your nose full of it even 230 years later, with the country looted and on the brink of Federal Reserve-engineered bankruptcy, the mercenary armies rising, the executive becoming an open oligarchy, and the corporate/banking behemoth openly wallowing in its plunder? Do you require more proof before you can open your damnable eyes and SEE? It is a straight line from Hamilton to this.
Conservatism, in the sense of retaining what is understood and gained from past experience, has nothing to do with political realities in this corrupted society. You cannot appeal to self-described “conservatives” in these times by reminding them that one of their cult heroes advocated change. Change is not what the modern distortion of conservatism fears. It fears a loss of power on the part of its corporate overlords.
So Hamilton passed moral judgment on greed, did he? I’m sure he had to do so, for open displays of greed would have made it less likely for his schemes to be accepted. In those days, people had a healthy disgust of self-aggrandizing behavior and usury. Unlike now, people were less likely to make such people into cultural heroes.
You seem to be ignoring my point, or to be fair, maybe I haven’t made myself clear. I never made Hamilton out to be a saint or anything. It’s pretty plain in the article I’m assuming you read:
“Of course, this is the Hamilton credited with building the current economic system almost single-handedly. The man who wanted big government under the patronage of the wealthy, who thought a Bill of Rights was stupid, and whose last words were ‘Our real disease is DEMOCRACY.’”
So my eyes may be damnable (who knows?) but clearly they still function to some degree.
I think Hamilton’s arguments are intellectually powerful and relevant to the current government’s inability to function. They also add weight and interest to the regime change debate, (regime change at home I mean.) Why? Because people, including me, have heard enough leftist rhetoric and find new voices a bit refreshing. and at the same time you get to beat the conservatives with their own stick a little!
Save your disingenuous protestations, please. Do you even know what you, yourself, are saying? Maybe. But maybe not. This twilight of consciousness in which we collectively now exist enables people such as you to mumble and equivocate their way into all manner of self-delusion.There is nothing plain in the article you wrote, Mr. Lenglain. It is a very model of the superficial, feel-good muddle that leaves people unsure what to think.
You portray the country’s citizens as unhappily enslaved and without the political resources to change their lot. So there you’ve flashed your entrance badge to those policing submissions to a liberal rag. What’s the answer to this sorry state in which the poor, downtrodden masses find themselves? Well, it’s the lack of an energetic will to change things, you say. And who might be a model for someone who can “tear things down and rebuild something new?” Alexander Hamilton! Then comes the acknowledgment of Hamilton’s vices, for “the master nation-builder was just human after all.” But actually, he had many noble characteristics, “honorable gentleman” that he was!
Have you ever heard of problem/reaction/solution, Mr. Lenglain? You know, 9/11/War on Terror/Police State? It’s how powerful people get a populace to complacently accept and even demand their own enslavement. I’ll tell you a little secret about world history - that little wonder of mass psychological manipulation didn’t just get invented in 2001.
The lack of discrimination (willful or otherwise) you evidence in your article - the pseudo-thoughtful, oh-so-reasonable, vaguely cheerful muddle of it - is horrendously damaging to the real will of a people. It is hemlock disguised as oatmeal. I, and I hope many others, will not swallow it.
I sure can tell I dashed off the previous reply at midnight. The third sentence of the second paragraph should say, “What’s the reason for this sorry state…” instead of “What’s the answer to…” Sorry for any confusion that may have caused.
Whoa!!
I dislike angry debates, especially if it keeps the sides from conceding points to the other.
Perhaps you are right that my article wasn’t plain. I might have fallen short of actually doing what you said I did: present Alexander Hamilton as a role model. I don’t think I actually did this, but I perhaps should have as Alexander Hamilton would be a great role model for the left.
Would more left-wingers sit down and write their criticisms and remedies for social ills in Liberty Pole-style letters (in the manner of Hamilton to James Duane,) then perhaps the anti-war movement that grew around the Iraq war would have a lot more to show than recordings of protest songs chanted at mass rallies. The disaster of this presidency brought about so much grassroots mobilization, but the “guiding spirit” of it all lacked the active, tangible solutions that made an Alexander Hamilton so successful and worth studying.
Since Hamilton was eighteen he advocated reform tactics “art of war” style, that anybody can learn from, regardless of the end he had in mind at the time. If the left took to such role models, they might even become the purveyors of “bold designs concerted with becoming resolution and executed with answerable firmness and success” in the movement for change. The fear you show of learning from anyone with a bad name is perhaps a decisive factor in protesters preferring the safe cachet of singing John Lennon songs at rallies, rather than learning from a great reformer.
And, why put down my cheerfulness? Cheerfulness goes hand-in-hand with optimism, as optimism goes hand in hand with change.
This society is all about “change”, Mr. Lenglain. Every morning, the majority of the citizens of American happy-land turn on their TVs to find out what it is now worthwhile to think, do, eat, wear, and buy. They reinvent themselves anew according to the constantly morphing zeitgeist, as delivered to them by media and advertising and the talking heads and cultural heroes/heroines of the day. This is the “change” of false utopia, of technological wizardry, of the compulsive externalization of human need rendered as consumption. How was all of this virtual-reality culture made possible? By making money fiat, taking over the creation of it, using it to acquire real assets, and substituting the economic and social interdependencies that were founded in the process of creating those real assets with an artificial culture full of distractions, entertainments and comforts. See the movie, Pleasantville, for a wonderfully-wrought elucidation of these principles. In fact, Pleasantville provides the perfect counterargument to your call for a newly impassioned rant by some Hamilton-inspired ideologue. What changed Pleasantville? It was changed by people becoming aware of their individual human and creative potential - which is the only way for true progress to happen.
The European bankers of the 18th century could not have dreamed of a world such as we live in today, but they lusted after power just as compulsively as any of their modern counterparts, and they worked tirelessly to build the framework for oligarchy from the political problem/reaction/solution opportunities of their time. The major tipping point in their favor was the Civil War. After that, it’s all been downhill into debt slavery. The framework for oligarchy that Hamilton and others labored to erect, has now become a prison with walls so encrusted with flashing lights, patriotic slogans, and mass-produced crap that most people don’t even know the walls are there.
Progressives see the walls, but take no real steps to try to destroy them. We are uneasy but, overall, passive and complicit. The dominant political/economic paradigm is so pervasive, so completely self-reinforcing and self-justifying that we feel there’s nothing we can do to change it. So we reduce our complicity in mostly symbolic ways, as the fact that the world will soon become a hugely more dangerous and chaotic place seeps into our collective consciousness. With no little anxiety and slowly increasing resolve, we wait, hoping that once the dominant paradigm collapses and the dust settles, the Earth will still be able to support our efforts to found a new one. Protesters gather more for mutual emotional support than in any expectation that change will result. Is this cowardice? To a certain extent, it is. I think there are things we could do - such as mounting a massive tax revolt - that would hasten the collapse of this economic house of cards before the elites are quite ready to implement a full-fledged police state. That window of opportunity is rapidly closing, and the prospect that there will be much left to build a new society with is diminishing apace. Are we just going to sit back and let this imperial insanity progress to nuclear war over remaining resources? But perhaps it won’t come to that. Perhaps greed will once again be its own undoing before things can come to that. Perhaps it is wise to husband time, energy, and resources toward building local economic and social structures to fall back on when this merry-go-round finally falls silent. It’s hard to know what to do. No one has a crystal ball.
Anyone who claims to be the new Alexander Hamilton is, in reality, only a self-promoting personality cult leader. There will be many of them, but all of their shiny theories as to how to remake society will come to naught. There is no utopia. Progress cannot happen through formulas. It has to happen as a result of doing the hard work of discovering what human progress consists of and what it is worthwhile to do. That is done by discovering that we aren’t, in fact, merely biological computers.
The change you describe at the beginning of your response has nothing to do with the change that Hamilton advocated, or that I advocate. I never saw Pleasantville, but it seems that Hamilton helped change the United States in the same way. Jefferson wanted everyone to be a farmer and depend on slaves, Hamilton wanted free slaves and a society that could “cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise” he accordingly believed that “minds of the strongest and most active powers for their proper objects fall below mediocrity and labour without effect, if confined to uncongenial pursuits” and worked for a new order where “each individual can find his proper element, and can call into activity the whole vigour of his nature.” The alternative was a static agrarian order congenial to the aristocratic, slave-driving land-owners of 1776 in the jeffersonian style. So that seems like progress to me.
It’s perfectly fine to want to move on from Hamilton’s legacy, from the past, but that doesn’t mean we have to discredit it entirely. I too would like to stage a massive tax-revolt of the kind Hamilton put down on horseback during his tenure in the cabinet. But that doesn’t keep me from admiring the man’s ideas to a certain extent, and the nature of his achievement.